Pastoral Medicine

Pastoral Medicine: Lecture 3

Schmidt Number: S-5911

On-line since: 27th March, 2008

LECTURE 3

Dear friends,

We will obtain a deeper view
of the total human being if we go a little further into
the matters we have been considering. In particular, we should see
from such symptoms how important the transition is from health to
illness. I therefore would like to speak further about something that
lies between certain pathological trends that are developing in human
evolution and a kind of natural initiation that constitutes another
stream in human evolution. This phenomenon lies midway between the
pathological tendencies of human nature and the stream of initiation;
it relates as much to one as to the other.

Typical of such a path
of development are such personalities as St. Teresa. One can observe
much more than I described if one makes a study of some of these
individuals. With them there is a kind of appearance of the spiritual
world at the threshold of perception. Naturally this is difficult to
describe, because the words one has to use to characterize these
abnormal conditions do not have such meanings in our everyday speech.
What appears at the threshold of perception is the first stage for
such people and is called by them “entrance into the first
dwelling place of God.” In the first stage this is perceived
only as “a presence.” These people experience the
presence of some spiritual being, but they have no precise vision of
the being. If the experience comes to a definite conclusion, they
have a clear feeling that the being was there with them. That is the
first experience: an indefinite experience of a presence, of being
together with some spiritual being. As long as they are in this stage
of development, these people are even annoyed when someone else tells
them of a vision, because these people think their own experience is
much more inward, much more intimate, more genuine. This has been
such a moving experience for them that they have the feeling: human
beings are not allowed to see the super-sensible world, but I have
been given this vague experience of its reality.

Then these people
reach a second stage. They tell of actual, shaped perceptions of the
spiritual beings that were present. First they tell of the feeling of
being touched, of having spiritual hands laid upon them, even of
their forehead being touched or something similar, without yet having
any visual experience. Then the condition is raised to vision that is
like optical perception. It can be so enhanced that they see Jesus,
for instance, standing before them as a real person. That is the
usual second stage. It is a peculiar fact that those advancing from
the first to the second stage have only the vaguest feeling that
earlier they had become angry when others told them of their own
experiences in this second stage. Memory does not clearly connect the
two stages. These people live very intensely in the respective single
stages.

The third stage they
experience is remarkable. Their description of it is highly colored
in every detail. They tell how when it comes upon them they are
seized by tremendous pain. And indeed it is obviously intense, for at
these moments they can be heard groaning; other reactions can be
observed such as occur with pain originating in the physical and
etheric bodies. But the strange thing is that they
want this pain. They want it because
they regard it as natural that they should have it; they feel that
they will only reach the subsequent experience properly if first they
suffer this pain.

Then they reach the
stage where they transform the pain within themselves. This is
extraordinarily interesting, for actually the pain remains exactly
the same, but now it is enhanced into a feeling of joy, of bliss. The
pain comes, its objective condition is still there, but now the
spiritual awareness goes further. If one were suddenly to pull such
people out of their spiritual state, they would feel the pain as sick
people feel pain — and indeed do so when they return from this
highest stage of the experience. At this highest stage they no longer
have the feeling that spiritual beings come to them, but that they
themselves have risen into the spiritual world. At this stage the
pain is transformed — one might say subjectively, but the
expression is not quite exact — into a feeling of bliss. Then
begins a symbolic objectifying of the pain. When they come out of
this experience and have a memory of it (and in most cases there is a
very clear memory of it afterward), then they describe how a seraph
or a cherub stood beside them, and the seraph or cherub had a sword
that he plunged into the their intestines, which caused excruciating
pain. When the spiritual being pulled out the sword he pulled the
intestines out too, and then there came immediately an experience of
profound bliss in the presence of God.

As a rule these three
stages follow in succession. We can understand them clearly through
our anthroposophical knowledge. After the preparatory condition I
have described, the first stage consists of the ego organization
drawing the astral body to itself, so that they are united without
penetrating the physical and etheric bodies as deeply as they
normally would. Something, therefore, is happening for such persons
that can never happen in ordinary consciousness: in half-waking or
quarter-waking or three-quarters waking condition they have conscious
experience in their ego organization and astral body, while at the
same time experience in their etheric and physical bodies continues
with a certain independence. Thus parallel experiences are there: a
spiritual experience in the ego organization and astral body, and at
the same time a separate experience of the etheric and physical
bodies. This is never the case in normal consciousness: there, all
four members of the human being are bound closely together. In normal
consciousness there is no such thing as experiences of consciousness
running parallel. In this experience I am describing, such people
feel themselves, know themselves in the most eminent sense to be
entirely united with what they are experiencing. They know this first
of all, the inherent being-one-with the happening. When the astral
body is drawn to the ego organization and experiences spiritual
beings, these people experience them as simply a presence, as
something that is there. They experience this as one experiences
one's own body. One does not differentiate in the latter experience.
One does not feel one's body as something outside: one feels it as
part of oneself. That is the first stage: the experience of “a
presence.”

Now let us go to the
second stage. First, these people have all kinds of feelings of being
touched. Naturally these can be confused very easily by ordinary
pathology with familiar psychiatric symptoms, but they are not the
same. Then they advance to actual visions. This is the stage where
the ego organization and astral organization draw the etheric body
out to be united with them. So again there is a parallel experience:
the ego organization, astral organization, and etheric body are all
raised somewhat out of the physical body; at the same time the
physical body carries on its processes separately. Something special
comes about through this situation. In ordinary life, when we see, we
are stimulated by light from without and we receive the stimulus into
ourselves. It goes as far as the etheric body, and the etheric body
creates the conscious experience. That is how it is, for example,
with the eyes. When you see, the external stimulation occurs first in
the ego; then it penetrates the astral body and penetrates the
etheric body. It is then the etheric body that communicates the whole
conscious experience to you by pushing in every direction, in a
certain sense, against the physical organization. The conscious
experience lies in this pushing. That is the exact process. If
presented in a diagram, it would look like the drawing below.

Diagram 1Click image for large view

A stimulus is exerted.
First it affects the ego, then it goes to the astral body, then to
the etheric body; in the etheric body it pushes into the physical
body in every direction, to all sides. The physical body pushes back,
and the pushing back, the repulsion by the physical body, is your
actual eye experience. It is a constant play between the etheric body
and the choroid and retina. What the etheric body does in the choroid
and in the retina is what appears to ordinary consciousness as
optical experience. This happens similarly with every other sense
perception. To anyone who understands these things, the entire
explanation in today's psychology textbooks, or even in epistemology,
is terribly childish.

But now, with such
people as I am describing, the etheric body is seized directly in
this experience. The experience sits in the ego, astral body, etheric
body, and does not push out to the senses, but pushes from within to
what is the nerve-sense system — pushes first, actually, into
the glandular system, then into the nervous system, and finally from
there streams into the senses. So the senses are taken hold of in a
way that is just the opposite of the way it happens in ordinary life.
Instead of the experience of consciousness being stimulated through
the senses, it is colored, intensified, made vivid by the fact that
it streams from within to the senses. That is how the feeling of
being touched comes about in a sensation of the nerves: by the
streaming from within outward. This is then raised to vision. Now you
know the whole inner process.

If there is a further
development, it proceeds in the following way: the ego organization,
astral body, and etheric body take hold of the physical body from
quite another direction than would normally be the case. The physical
body is accustomed to being taken hold of from without, but now it is
taken hold of from within. Now it is taken hold of in the midst of
life — the very process that otherwise only happens when the
human soul-spiritual entity comes down out of the soul-spiritual
world into the physical body, three weeks after conception. This
event cannot otherwise happen in ordinary life, because normally the
etheric body is connected with the physical body. But in this case
the etheric body has been raised out by the ego organization and
taken hold of by the astral body. It is like birth, when the human
being takes possession of a physical body, but now the procedure is
more complicated, possessing this physical body from quite another
direction. And that causes pain. For as a matter of fact, all pain
— in cases of illness, too — consists of the fact that
the body is grasped hold of from some other direction than the usual
one. That is what happens at the moment when the third stage is
reached.

Now you need not be
surprised that this third stage is objectified. It penetrates the
physical body and the physical body repels it. A physical body cannot
be so seized except in regular initiation; in any other situation the
physical body exerts opposition, and this causes pain. It pushes away
in pain what it is experiencing. That is the first part of the
experience of the third stage. The physical body exerts resistance
and the resistance is experienced as pain. And what enters through
the pain? The real spiritual world. It comes through the pain. The
spiritual world comes from the other direction. Ordinary sense
perception and ordinary thinking grasp hold of the physical world.
The spiritual world is grasped in the opposite way. The way to it is
through pain. The moment the physical body exerts resistance, intense
pain is there. But the moment the pain is taken hold of by the
spiritual world, the moment the spiritual world enters, the pain is
transformed into ecstasy. It is really so. First there is pain in the
organism; then the spiritual world penetrates the pain, streams
through the pain: a cherub or seraph appears (this is what the
imagination presents), the cherub plunges his sword in, draws it out,
and draws the intestines out with it. This means that the person
becomes independent of the physical body, of the ordinary connection
to it. The person has no experience in the lower organs and is led
beyond it to an experience of the spiritual world. The physical pain
is transformed to bliss. Such people speak of the presence of God, or
if they make distinctions, of the presence of the spiritual
world.

This last stage is
experienced by individuals who are strong enough in their etheric
body to endure the entire happening. They have the foundation for it
in their karma. For instance, think of St. Teresa. She had an earlier
incarnation in which her soul became especially strong. She
incarnates as St. Teresa. But before she incarnates in the physical
body, she takes possession of her etheric body very forcefully, and
this etheric body becomes inwardly stronger than is the case with the
usual human being. She has brought it with her into this life, this
etheric body that is inwardly strong. Then this strong etheric body
leaves the physical body and unites itself firmly with the astral
body and ego, which are also especially strong from an earlier
incarnation. And that is why illnesses then appear, at least a
certain variety of illness: because the etheric body is not staying
in the physical organs and providing them with its nourishing,
vitalizing forces. With the individuals I am describing, the moment
they enter the third stage they become really ill. At the same time
their strong etheric body enables them to overcome the illness as it
is developing. The illness begins to develop and immediately an
automatic therapy arises within them from the strong etheric body.
The entire process is a latent illness and healing. This is one of
the most interesting phenomena in the realm of human evolution.

Precisely in the case
of St. Teresa you see in the final stage of her development a
continual status nascendi of
illness and the continual cure. This alternation, this wonderful
swing of a pendulum between the beginning of illness and the caring
of it, is not a natural happening in the physical world, for it is
not brought about in the physical world: it takes place in the
spiritual world. We know that the etheric body is formed before the
earthly incarnation. And it is into that pre-earthly moment that such
a person as St. Teresa returns. When the pathological condition
starts, when it is in statu nascendi,
she “swings” into the world where she
was before birth, into the spiritual world. The pendulum swings
between the physical body and the spiritual world. Spiritual world
— physical world — spiritual world — physical
world, but experiencing the physical world as an exact opposite
— such as normally human beings only experience when they are
just incarnating into it. This inner process of healing, this therapy
coming from the cosmos, is so intense that its effect can spread to
sick people who are in the neighborhood of such people, if their
illness lies somewhat in the same direction. In fact, the most
wonderful cures can take place around such a person.

Indeed the influence
can extend much further. In the former, better days of the church,
these things were used in a careful, esoteric way. Later this
degenerated to a superstitious worship of relics and belief in magic.
But it is a fact that in better times of religious evolution, vivid
biographies of such individuals, including their own imaginative
descriptions, were given to the faithful, so that they could live
through the experiences of such people in their own imagination. And
it could then happen that when thoughtful pastors had the
opportunity, they would simply put such a biography into the hands of
someone in ordinary life whose illness was going in a certain
direction. Perhaps also they strengthened the effect by their own
words, and this was able to start curative processes. Directing the
sick individual's mind to the life of such a saint could have a
therapeutic effect.

You can see that
studies that go so deeply into the human being will always lead from
health to illness, but also to states of super-sensible experience. If
therefore you advise someone in some connection or other to do
exercises to gain entrance into the super-sensible world, the
exercises must be so oriented that they strengthen the ego
organization, astral body, and etheric body. Such a path as I
described, given to individuals simply through their karma, will in
fact take its course properly. What takes place in initiation itself
can be learned by studying these processes, which border so closely
on the pathological. Therefore it is not unimportant for physicians
to take the time to study the lives of such people. Physicians will
find in them what can only be called a paradox: the healthy
counterpart of a complex of pathological symptoms that they are
accustomed to meet here and there in everyday life. And for
physicians, that is the most beneficial thing possible: to see the
healthy counterpart of a pathological condition. That, more than
anything else, will help physicians to make thoughtful, conscientious
decisions about their therapy. Moreover if physicians have some
knowledge of the substance that can be used as a remedy because of
its affinity to certain etheric forces — forces that
automatically become active in the self-healing of these abnormal
individuals — they will know how St. Teresa's etheric body
developed its forces when her illnesses appeared
in statu nascendi. And if physicians
learn to know the healing power to be found in the piercing activity
of antimony, then they will have learned the right therapy from
Nature herself.

I would like to point
out that in examining such experiences as these, one encounters a
remarkable paradox: one sees illness from another side. One sees
illness being treated not by human beings but by spiritual beings.
One kind of treatment is the kind human beings evolve: that is,
treatment from the aspect of the earth. It consists of restoring the
previous condition through some therapy that breaks up the illness.
The spiritual beings that have to do with humanity treat illness
differently. They weave an illness into the fabric of karma. That is
their task — a task that doesn't pile things together as they
are piled together here on earth by pathology. Here a
seventeen-year-old who is ill is not always cured by forty-five. But
with the way karma is formed, an illness in some incarnation, whether
it is cured or not, may be woven into the human being's karma three
thousand years later. Time is measured quite differently in the
spiritual world. But one learns very much from those developments in
which, from a spiritual point of view, something can happen in the
spiritual world and then can also stream down into the physical
world.

Diagram 2Click image for large view

Take, for example,
such a form of karma as I have been describing. Perhaps it is
completely in the ordinary course of evolution in three thousand
years. Let me show by this line (see drawing above) that something
that happens to a person today is so shaped by spiritual beings that
the other part belonging to it, the balance, the compensation,
appears in three thousand years' time. That is the normal course. You
see, in ordinary life people don't have a true knowledge of time. How
do they think of it ordinarily? As a line running from past infinity
through the present into the future. That is approximately how time
is imagined — and indeed, the line has to be thick —
perhaps not even a line, but a thick rope, because it contains
everything that is perceived at any given moment in the whole world.
That's the way people think of it if they think of it at all —
and most people don't think of it at all. From a spiritual point of
view time is not like that. And one finds little understanding for
spiritual development — which, after all, is present in all
physical evolution — when time is thought of in that
conventional way. In reality, time is different. The line I drew on
the board can be tangled up into a ball (see drawing). The entire
line of time is in that ball. Three thousand years are in that ball.
Time can be all tangled up; and if it is tangled up for some
development or other in evolution, then the tangle can be found in
the life of some individual. In the case of St. Teresa, a tangled
ball of time was present in her earthly life. We come upon a true
mystery — that things that in someone's karma would seem to be
widely separate for some reason become entangled.

You see from such an
example how a study of the inner spiritual, karmic development must
link up with the external pathological and therapeutic inquiry. You
can see how the pastoral care of some person by priests, who are
basing their view of the person on the karmic connections, the
spiritual aspects, can relate to what is seen from a medical view
alone. For a comprehension of these things requires not only
theoretical knowledge but really living into the things. Physicians
must live into them on the pathological, physiological side that
opens up for them. Priests must live into them in the theological and
karmic views that open up for them. And the harmony will come from
their working together out of these two different fields, not from
interfering in each other's field in a dilettantish fashion. This
must be stressed again and again.

You must still see
something else that is connected with these things, particularly in
our epoch. You know how distasteful it is to some people to accept
the idea of free will even though it is perfectly obvious to an
unbiased person. The philosophers deny its reality because their
intellect can't make a connection with it. I said just now in regard
to sense perceptions that the explanations in physiology and
psychology textbooks are absolutely childish to someone who
understands these things. But the chatter over free will is far
worse. For you must remember: a decision of free will is at every
moment an act of the whole human being — the whole human being
— no matter how they appear in this impulse: healthy or ill or
half ill or abnormally healthy. The whole human being is involved in
an impulse of free will — and, all that can be known of the
whole human being, all the complications. One only learns to know
human nature when one learns to know it with all its complications.
And please notice, something that in an abnormal person shows too
strong a color in one or another direction is neutralized, harmonized
in the ordinary human being. There's a trivial expression, but it's
true: A cherub can make friends with you, but the devil can too. And
those processes where the devil can squeeze in — we're going to
study them too! This is all to be found in the ordinary human being,
but opposing forces are neutralized, because they develop equally
strongly in every direction. If there's an angel in every human,
there's also a devil. But when the angel and the devil are equally
strong, they neutralize each other.

Diagram 3Click image for large view

Now take a look at
these scales (see drawing). There is one spot, one point right here.
You can lay weights there or there and then you have put the scales
into movement. But this spot always remains still. It has a name: the
hypomochlion. It is not affected by what you lay on the scale at the
left, or what you lay on the scale at the right. Of course, the
scales must be built so that this spot will not need to be disturbed.
Now in the human being a similar spiritual hypomochlion is created by
the opposing forces. Therefore you can study human nature and you
will never be able to call human beings free, for by their very
nature they are causally conditioned in all respects.

If you study the
nature of human beings from the viewpoint of materialism, you do not
come to the idea of freedom. You come to causal conditioning. If you
study human beings from a spiritual viewpoint, you come to the
determination of the will by God or by spiritual beings; you do not
come to free will. You can be a blockhead of a materialist and deny
freedom and do research on the natural causality of the will. Or you
can be a sophisticated person like Leibnitz and gaze out at a
spiritual universe — and you come to determinism. Naturally, as
long as you are considering the scale at this left end of the beam,
you have to reckon with movement; so long as you are considering the
scale at this right end of the beam, again you have to reckon with
movement. And it is the same with human beings: whether you consider
them from the point of view of nature or from the point of view of
spirit, you do not come to freedom. Freedom lies in the middle at the
point of balance between them.

That's theory, of
course! In practice you have to decide when people come to you with
difficult life situations whether you can make them responsible for
their actions. Now this becomes a practical question: whether they
can or cannot exercise free will. How are you going to decide this?
You decide by judging whether their spiritual and physical
constitutions are in balance. And in this the physicians and the
priests are equally involved. Therefore both physicians and priests
must be trained to understand the conditions under which a person is
either in balance or not in balance between spirit and nature.

Whether an individual
has this sense of responsibility can only be decided out of a deep
knowledge of human nature. The problem of freedom in connection with
responsibility is one of the deepest problems imaginable.

Let us continue
tomorrow. We will see what from one side leads to health and from the
other side leads to pathological conditions.